Fallacies of Solemnity
by Randirogue
Summary: Wolverine thinks Rogue joined the Brotherhood to spite him. Rogue's sure he couldn’t get a clue if it bit him on his backside. Obstinate, he stays his hand when a torrid, devil-may-care thief ups the ante of their game: can’t touch the skin, get under it.


**Summary:** Wolverine is convinced that Rogue joined the Brotherhood to spite him. Rogue thinks he couldn't get a clue if it bit him on his backside. Obstinate, he stays his hand when a torrid, devil-may-care thief ups the ante of their game: can't touch the skin, so get under it. Can there even be a winner amongst these battles of wills?

**Disclaimer:** I'm quite certain you all know who actually owns these characters. You may even know who gets credit for the scenes that I quote from the animated series, but I'll footnote their episode origins, anyhow.

**Author's Note:** Forgive me for posting yet another story when I've yet to finish _Seether_, _Callous_, the _X-Men Rising_ series, _Masochistic Me_, and the story under my semi-secret alternate penname (if you know it, don't give it away in reviews, etc.). This idea struck like lightning and stuck like fly paper. Or maybe, more like that comic/gamer geek's (some of my favorite peeps) eyes to my cleavage, since I feel a little dirty for posting this rather than updates for those other long overdue fics of mine.

**Dialogue Note:** I'm probably going to go a little light on the accents, Rogue's at least. It almost pains me to do so with Remy, especially since the voice actor actually does the no "_th_" sounds for him in the show. Maybe it'll pain me too much to keep to this vow too tightly. We'll see.

* * *

**Chapter One**

"…"

"…"

They begin quietly enough, these dangerous undertakings. But, even under the best of circumstances and the purest of intentions, things can go south, and fast. In the case of these players, they didn't even have those lofty righteous indignations to support them. Defunct and slightly damaged as they were, they were sort of doomed from the start. Was there even a possibility of having a winner with these stakes? It was like this, that their battle of wills began.

"…"

"…"

Fred Dukes, aka the Blob, nudged his unfortunate, and oftentimes exasperating, buddy, Mortimer Toynbee, aka the Toad, with the goading prompt, "Well, go on."

"Ow!" Toad complained as he rubbed his shoulder. Blob's nudge had sent him careening painfully into the counter three feet away. "For that, you're on your own."

"What, you scared?" Blob taunted disgustedly back. Like many, he often hated in others that which he disliked in himself.

"Uh… yeah!" Toad exclaimed guilelessly. "Duh!"

Blob smiled, amused. That was why he liked the little bugger. He was honest about stuff most people wouldn't dare admit to. Perhaps, even, he was boisterously candid about such things because most _wouldn't_ admit to them. In a backwards way, it proved he was strong, tough, if not stronger, tougher.

"I've felt her wrath once already," Toad continued. "I say it's your turn."

"But you couldn't squish her like I could," Blob said, grinning. He was proud that he'd thought up that excuse so quick. "That would make Domino mad."

"Good point," Toad grumbled.

"Plus," Blob said with a burst of enthusiasm at his own idea, "You could do it from a safe twenty feet away!"

"Twenty-five feet," Toad corrected.

"Exactly!"

"Except, it was my tongue that got me caught last time."

"Oh, yeah," Blob said, deflating, as he remembered the incident in which she was recruited to their team. [i]

"Hey, it was nothing," Toad said in attempt to cheer up his friend. "Where's the fun without the risk?"

Before Blob could counter him, Toad bounded behind a nearby console in a single leap. Before Blob's hand had fully outstretched to warn off his buddy, Toad's tongue was already springing out of his mouth. And, before Toad's tongue wrapped in her hair to give it a tug, thus accomplishing their goal of waking her up, she caught it in her hand. Her gloved hand.

Toad and Blob froze.

"…"

"…"

The wait made them ever more nervous.

"…"

"…"

Would she get creative?

"…"

"…"

Was she just letting her steam build to a riotous kettle pop?

"…"

"…"

It was neither. Anticlimactically, she dropped Toad's disturbing appendage. It flopped listlessly over the back of the couch on which she lay until he, disbelieving, reeled it back in.

"Go away," sassed the distinctively southern brotherhood member. "I got a headache."

So it had been more slur than sass. It was grumbled and foreboding, nonetheless.

Toad snapped his mouth shut and jerked his head at Blob as if to say "_go on, tell her_."

Grim with dumb resolve, Blob explained, "Pietro says its time."

"Fine," she said, exhaling in annoyance. The leather creaked as she stood up. The look she flicked to them as she skulked toward the exit gave them the willies. Malicious. Spiteful. Guilty. And… Eager.

"Careful," Blob heard himself call after her.

"Don't worry," she tossed back as she halted at the door. "Logan won't have a clue."

_He never does with me_, she scoffed to herself.

* * *

"_I'm not an assassin_," she'd told Logan by way of convincing him she'd come to her senses regarding siding with the Brotherhood. He'd believed her, then. He might still believe it of her even when she didn't come back to the mansion. But, when she saw the betrayed disapproval on Warren's stoic, placid face after he'd saved her from the MRD officer, _she_ didn't believe it. After all, nature had seemed to have deemed it be her flesh and, well, flesh purpose.

Bitterness crackled along her spine to lodge comfortably in her skull. More angry than depressed (though that was surely scratching at her too), she whipped open the industrial doors to the Brotherhood's base of operations, a shambles of a high-rise corporate office building in the middle of Manhattan.

"Nice job," Domino commended, leaning on her pool cue.

"Yeah," Pietro took up. "In one fell swoop, you set up the X-Men and proved your loyalty to the brotherhood."

If she were forced to be a pariah to all she cared about, she'd just stick with those whom she didn't have much of a care. At least this way, when the inevitable came, none of them could hurt her as bad as Logan had all those times he had hightailed it on her.

"Welcome aboard," Pietro said, inviting. [ii]

Grinning fierce and predatory, she strode inside to her new _family_. Even thinking it, she almost choked on the sarcasm.

_I'll show him._

_

* * *

_

Months later, the mansion's reconstruction was nearly complete, and Logan was still stewing over Rogue's dissension.

"Rogue," Warren said as he hesitated at the door, "You plan on trying to get her back?"

"Nope," Logan answered, looking down. _Stubborn girl doesn't know what she's playing at. _Irritated, he slid a sidelong glance to Warren. "Not after she hung us out to dry." _Damn magnet for trouble, is what she is. She'll come around soon enough. She'll have no choice. _He reached for the door, opening it. "Next move is hers." [iii]

_She'll see she how much she needs us._

_

* * *

_

Weeks after that, the Brotherhood had been dormant, and amidst lounging around the decrepit base, fending off Toad's antics, and watching a world news report summarizing the UN's lack of assistance in salvaging an African village that had been drowned by a freak, disastrous storm, Rogue found she needed something to stave off her growing complacency.

Chucking the television remote onto the coffee table, she called out to everyone, no one, "I'll be back."

She wandered the desolate streets alone, attempting to build back up her resolve with every obstinate step she took along her most recent path. Loneliness, she was doing this for loneliness.

"_I want you to come back."_ [iv]

Even if she went back to the X-Men, she'd still be alone. Logan was gone more often than not, and even when he wasn't, he didn't understand that it was his stuttering presence that was turning her so reticent, so spiteful… so bitter.

"_It's not the same! You're more… oh, forget it!"_

"_More what?" _[v]

She tried to shake the memory off, but couldn't. His floundering expression had been rather out-of-character: desperate, hopeful, and confused. His gruff surety had flown the coop and it left her sputtering. But, it was important that she get it out so she'd tried to explain what her problem was with him. She _tried_ to accurately wrap her words around the great big snag of emotions all jumbled up together that encompassed what it was he was to her, what he'd meant to her. Unfortunately, it came out stunted and poor.

"_Can't you see?" _[vi]

Fed up with herself as much as with him, she left him to deal with it, or not deal with it, as would most likely be the case. It had been their last conversation before the attack on Xavier and the destruction of the institute, of the X-Men, of what little snarl of a family she'd nested herself into. Thinking back, it seemed that argument had been a foreshadowing. Didn't take long for Xavier's disappearance to separate them. She was already on her way out, right after Logan took off again, and he'd be too late to notice. Like now.

_He'll see._

If she didn't make him understand the error of his ways, they'd be distant forever. Since waiting around for him, awkwardly doting on him, and finally telling him outright hadn't made him see, then perhaps nothing would. But, before she gave up on him reciprocating her connection to him, she was plying one last strategy: Make him regret his actions. Show him that his actions toward her had repercussions. Show him that when he takes someone under his claws to watch out for them and protect them, bigger bonds eventually formed, and he had a responsibility to upkeep them. If not, it'd be a gamble how that someone turned out. It's how criminals and terrorists got formed.

_Just like Pietro_. Only thing that boy wanted was to make his father proud. Had to get away from the man before his jealousy of his sister turned to permanent hate. Maybe it was why he stuck so closely, become the de-facto co-leader, with Domino—probabilities monger that she is, and all. A constant reminder, perhaps? [vii]

Not that Pietro ever confided in the southern spitfire, of course. Much as Domino swore they stuck together and took care of each other, there were deep chasms between the motley lot of them. No, Rogue had learned of Pietro's situation through his various grumblings every time he saw an ad for Genosha, Magneto's mutant promise land.

She sighed. They had a lot in common, she sadly admitted. She didn't want to feel for them. It sort of ruined how easy it was supposed to be to keep her safe distance from them. She needed them to pull another crazy stunt soon so those reasons to resolutely abhor them would be fresh in her mind again.

Even the idea of settling in too comfortably with them made her palms sweat. Unable to kick the anxiety behind the sweating, she peeled off her gloves and shoved them in her coat pocket. There were very few people on the streets at this hour so she figured it wouldn't be too difficult to avoid any contact.

The air was cool as it dried her hands. She flexed her fingers, enjoying the feel of their freedom, as she warily eyed the lone stranger making good use of the shadows under the eave up ahead. He wore a long coat like she did. However, whereas hers was a dark olive green and made from a durable and flexible fabric (she didn't exactly know or care what kind), his was brown, and looked like natural leather. While hers had a generous, billowy hood, his had a wide, stiff collar. Her hood was part and parcel of her personal armor, but he had some punk looking plates of metal, probably more for show, than anything. Ambient light from the sallow streetlights and the electric blue neon sign in the window glinted off those steely bits arching over his shoulders and upper arms like clawed hands clamping down on either side of him from behind. He was smoking a cigarette as he leaned casually against the brick wall of the billiards bar when she passed. She kept him in her peripheral the whole of her crossing in front of him.

He watched her right back. He didn't even bother to disguise it, so she figured why should she bother to either? Like her, he did it through overlong bangs. His, however, didn't have the recognizable white streak that marked her as different. But, she learned as she briefly met his smoldering, valuing gaze, red-on-black as it was, his obvious difference couldn't be explained away as a choice of alternative fashions.

_Mutant_, she scoffed to herself, _of course_.

And as if her thoughts had opened their gambit, he spoke.

"Not so safe to be walking around alone out here, chère," he said in a hominy drawl.

It bore straight into her as surely as Logan's adamantium claws could. Out of the holes he'd wrought, seeped not blood, but memories of the south, of the Mississippi's slow trudge towards the gulf, of hot nights lit by fireflies and cooled by iced tea, of humid days sizzled by the sun and relieved by cut off shorts and spaghetti strapped tees, and of fantastic boastings that this year they'd make it out to ground zero, to the infamous French Quarter of New Orleans itself, for Mardi Gras, come hell or high water. For an instant, she pined for a home she'd given up hope for long before she dared to allow herself to gain faith, let alone lose it, in the one that included Logan. The pang died as quick as it came. It spiraled up and away as airily as the smoke of the stranger's cigarette.

So she ignored him and continued walking. But just in case, she dug into her pocket for her gloves.

She halted.

There was only one.

She dug deeper, turning out her pockets. Coming up empty, she spun around, searching the ground, but found nothing.

"Looking for dis…?" began that hominy voice of the smoky stranger. It was smooth and raspy all at once. It promised wickedness and scandalous fortune intertwined. It was tension and ease undulating in rolling waves off his smooth tongue. It was also right behind her.

She flinched, whipping around, her still bare hand already in motion to contact his face.

"…chère," he finished as he caught her covered wrist. He arched an amused, yet skeptical eyebrow at her as he dangled her missing glove for her to see.

She frowned, steaming. "Yes," she said as she snatched it from him. And, seeing as he still had her wrist in a firm grip, she added, "Can I have my hand back now too?"

His eyes pulsed once, twice, three times, and he let her go. He stepped back, hands raised to show he was unarmed. Harmless. Sure. He wore gloves. She'd missed that before, probably because they left his fingers bare. His cigarette was gone. She didn't know when he'd stubbed it out or stepped on it or tossed it, whatever he'd done to get rid of it. She swore silently to herself; she should've been paying closer attention. Logan would've told her that it served her right, stomping around in the middle of the night where any fool could get the wrong idea and be emboldened by enough drink to take a stab at it, at her. In fact, he did tell her this. Or at least, the stored imprint of his psyche did. It was somewhat wordier than the real Logan. Inside her mindscape, he didn't exactly speak so much as her subconscious translated the garble of thoughts and feelings the psyche emanated.

"Relax," the smoky stranger drawled, dragging it out. "I'm just doing a good deed." He lowered his arms and his hands got momentarily lost in the billowing folds of his duster. Easing into a slow, carefree grin, he gestured to the still open billiards bar. "You could show me how grateful you are by coming in out of de cold to accompany me for a drink."

_Told ya so_, huffed mind-Logan.

"Don't think so," she bit out.

"Next time, den," he solicited. Boy must dribble honey on his hominy to get so lush a voice.

She almost snorted. "Don't bet on it."

Pivoting on one heel, she skulked off at a brisk pace. She felt his eyes on her with every step until she turned the corner. Pulse hammering, breathing slowing, she slid on her glove, the one she'd taken back from him, the one she'd clutched tightly as she had fled. She dipped into her pocket for the one she hadn't lost… and came up empty.

"Damn it!" She snarled to herself. She considered going back for it – _slimy, backwater hick probably stole it_ – but decided it wasn't worth it. Not like she didn't have a dozen others at ho… at the base. She shoved her hands in her pockets and stomped off.

* * *

Remy waited until she turned the corner before loosing an appreciative whistle. Like her, he spun on a heel. Unlike her, his turn was a masculine sort of half-pirouette, rife with ease and nonchalance, but rationed and full of grace nonetheless. Sauntering off in the opposite direction, he pulled out the filched glove from his pocket; he'd stolen it while he distracted her with the pulsing of his eyes. His phone buzzed, not nearly as silent as its days-ago-owner had boasted before he'd relieved her of the burden of it, and with his free hand, he withdrew it from an inner pocket. The caller ID brought a rambunctious smile, mischievous and rowdy, to Remy's pleasantly weathered features.

"Allo, Henri," he answered his brother with the flair of one caught playing hooky and proud to flaunt it.

"We're here on Guild business, Remy," Henri stated all wired up and serious.

"Oui," Gambit replied, "Dat we are." The grin dimmed but did not disappear. "Make me want to chuck ya on your shoulder and say, 'good job, son,' when you take dat tone wit' me."

Henri heaved a sigh that was tattered by a bit of burbling laughter at the edges. "And talk like _dat_ make me see some of Jean-Luc's side of t'ings."

"So you say," Gambit cajoled, "Yet you used his given name and not his proper one."

A long moment of Henri's breathing, then the confused and hesitant, "Dad?"

"Or dat one," Gambit loosed pithily. Bitterness stretched the words the teensiest bit, and then it was gone, swallowed down like the thirty year old scotch he'd sipped while losing game after game of nine-ball in the hustle of coin of a more valuable nature back at the billiards bar.

The yellow glove _(golden as an angel's crown in the stained glass windows at St. Louis Cathedral)_ was sunnier than she had been, a forced fit.

"You were right," Gambit continued before his brother could launch into another tirade that was more lecture and less persuasion about _the __famille_, "Why buy when you can lease?"

"Talking women in general or just a certain brunette wit' an ironic streak for white?"

It hadn't been worn for the cold, either. Too thin. A little like she had been.

"Cybil," Gambit narrowed for him, "And not de many-faces-of kind. Zane, naturellement." _Of course_.

"Hmm," Henri mused for a moment, then asked, "Find out where?"

So why wear them, if not against the chill? Though belle, she had enough frost of her own to counter it. Perhaps that was her angle. Covered up in layers, tucked inside that jacket hood, like peaking out of heavy-lidded eyes… was it her way of saving New York City from getting too heavy a dose of her icy core?

"Peut-être," _Maybe_, Gambit said, his mind only half on the conversation with his brother now. "Warehouse on de waterfront." He rolled his eyes. "What else?"

"I'll send Emile," Henri said. the rustling of cloth heard over the connection informed Gambit that Henri had probably gestured at that very cousin to get on his way.

"Non," Gambit jumped in. "I got it." But the glove was still warm. "Almost dere already." And soft. He changed the subject as a distraction, "Who's invited to de official rendezvous?"

Gambit didn't really hear Henri's answer. He'd only asked it to give the illusion that he was that hard at work on the Thieves Guild's latest potential job. Besides, he was too busy studying the glove via touch—crafty, nimble, and practiced as his was. He rubbed the fabric between his fingers, memorizing its texture and letting his thoughts sink salaciously at the friction of one side sliding, slick, and barely abrasive, against the other.

He caught Henri's final words _("__n'entrez pas__") _in time for him to utter the requisite, "D'accord," _okay_, and "Bonne nuit," _good night_, so he could fold the call closed and pocket the phone.

Both hands free now, he fumbled the glove between them as he glided from shadow to lengthier shadow, a sure sign that he was encroaching into the more industrial neighborhood that fringed the port. He paused, concealing himself beside a dumpster, and gave the blocky, non-descript warehouse where their latest potential client supposedly worked a thorough look-see. It was kept up well enough: months' old paint rimed in a tidy layer of grime and salt corrosion, roof patched but solid looking, and several attractive blinks on security panels nestled neatly against the doorframes _(two standard entry and one garage/loading dock)_. The doors were all shut tight. Windows too. A whole lot of light pressed against the high-up murky banks of glass _(like engorged nubs)_, making them appear to swell and pucker from the force of the glow. The warehouse suited the neighborhood. The woman that supposedly worked inside, however, did not—one card shy of a royal flush and only a spade up the sleeve. He was missing something important.

The glove spilled from one hand into the other and back again.

He didn't like the idea of Henri having so many of them go to the initial meeting knowing so little about the potential client or what she could be wanting them to snatch. They got the best deals so often because they were so well informed in advance. Surprise, even when hidden, made for a bad backbone when negotiating price, after all.

His phone buzzed and he flipped it open.

"Do not go in," Henri, know-it-all brother he tried to be, stated in a stern tone he probably thought left no room to rebuke. It was a repeat of his last few words of their last call.

"Never crossed my mind," Gambit said. A small smile tugged the corner of his mouth.

The glove poured into his hand and he squeezed it. Something small in the folds protested the pinch.

"I mean it, Remy," Henri warned. "De femme be a ripe fanged pouffiasse. She's hooked up somewhere, somehow. I know dat much for certain." [viii]

"I'll go fish in a different river, den," Remy said casually, like it didn't matter either way. He grinned swimmingly, even though Henri couldn't see it. "Don't wait up."

Gambit stretched and pulled the fabric until he found the hidden bundle of concentrated threads on the underside of the cuff.

An amused snort, then: "Meeting's set for tomorrow night at ten," Henri informed him as a secondary pretense for the call. "Leave it alone 'til den."

"D'accord," Gambit said neutrally. No pretense. He ended the call.

The dime sized embroidered insignia was unmistakable. The ringed _(haloed)_ X marked the feisty enigma it had belonged to as one of the X-Men.

"Pity," he told himself.

He tossed the glove towards the dumpster, more than in it, and sauntered off. The shadows swallowed him, bitterly, moments later. Slinky, slithery, and silent as he was, a single pulse of his smoldering, hearts-and-valentines eyes could give him away.

The discarded glove wilted into the sludge in the crevice between the nasty brick wall and the even trashier pit that had been his temporary stalking mount.

* * *

_Thank you for reading. Please review._

* * *

**Footnotes**

[i] Episode 2: "Hindsight – Part 2"

[ii] Again, Episode 2: "Hindsight – Part 2"

[iii] Episode 3: "Hindsight – Part 3"

[iv] And again, Episode 2: "Hindsight – Part 2"

[v] Episode 1: "Hindsight – Part 1"

[vi] Again, Episode 1: "Hindsight – Part 1"

[vii] See Pietro, Domino and other character bios of on the show's official website (www dot areyouamutant dot com).

[viii] Pouffiasse is a French slang for bitch.


End file.
